Tagged NSFW because there’s a slight trigger in this.
You know when you’re 14, you find other teenagers attractive. When you’re 20, you find other 20ish year olds attractive, but even though you used to like 14-15 year olds, now you don’t.
How is it we develop like this? Is there a change in your brain over time or is it driven just by society’s rule that you shouldn’t be going near people much younger?
Comments
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societal norms and biology. your gonna wanna find a suitable mate. me being in my early 20s and future partners im not going to find a teenager as a suitable match.
but my gf that’s my same age and has a job and can support herself/ us as needed is much more suitable
I find ur question relatable and I had the same thought in my mind. When I was 15 I used to like my 15 yr old classmates very much and was deeply physically attracted to her and at the time I had no attraction towards woman who were 25 which I am now. But now If I think about getting physically attracted to a 15 y/o then It sounds weird and unacceptable for obvious reasons. its actually amazing how we mature and our brain adapt to such naturally psychological changes.
Naturally you and your peers who are the same age will almost always see I to eye, that’s just fundamental
Depends… Most men are driven by fertility indicators, and most women are driven by provision and protection indicators…
Plus we’re conscious social beings, so there are societal trends, but even those tend to focus on excentuating natural traits people find attractive…
Plus gender spectrum stuff… Hormones that determine most of it exist in different quantities and ratios in different people…
attraction is not solely based on age and appearance. Power and Charisma to name a few.
I hate that I’m thirty six but attracted to feminine men and twinks. I’m aging out of my type and it’s getting weirder and weirder.
We have wedding photos in our house, and we were married at 26. Now we’re 47 and I do a double take when I look at my wife’s photo and think “wow she’s beautiful” and then realize I’m leering at a 26 year old, which would be weird in any other circumstance.
I’m gonna say something strange, but I never once found women my own age attractive as a kid until I turned 19, I had crushes on teachers, my mothers friends and other older women. But even to this day I prefer women in their mid-late 30’s while I’m only 26
There’s no rule that says you have to stop finding 20-ish year olds attractive. You’re just far less likely to want to date them and vice versa. The range of ages you find attractive can rise with your own, but it also can simply “get broader” such that you still find younger people attractive, but also find people your own age attractive. How you act on your attraction is more relevant than the attraction itself.
My opinion is that we are attracted to people with similar interests, lifestyles, experiences, morals, etc. and it’s often a peer who will check most of those boxes.
Of course there’s fluctuation of attractiveness for other reasons in the mix as well but I think people connect most to those they can relate with and vice versa
I have no filters…except jailbait.
Seriously…undercooked pizza
A guy explained it to me that as you age you find that age attractive and you will also still find 18+ (really emphasized the 18+ haha) attractive. So therefore when you’re 70 (which he was) you are just surrounded by attractive women. What you would find appealing as a partner is completely different.
When you’re 14-15 you start finding people attractive around you and you may find older people attractive too. As you grow older you have a natural instinct to be attracted most to the people around your same age.
When you’re like 19-21 you are in this weird spot where you have a natural instinct to be attracted to people around 17-24 attractive but around this point in time there should be something in your brain telling you that you should be only go after people within your own stage of life. If you’re smart you’ll only go after people within your own stage of life. You’ll still find the people younger pretty/handsome/cute because we all have eyes and aren’t blind but there is a part of your brain that tells you it’s not right or a smart idea to go after those people and it’s best to stay with people within your own age.
Why would you as a 26 year old want to date a 18 year old? Ok maybe they look very good but on a life level you’re so different, you got to work about work and bills meanwhile they are going to prom, you might get into a fight about them going to a school dance and cheating on you meanwhile you are worried about getting to bed on time for early work. It’s just dumb.
Well, I’m not an expert, but here’s my theory. A lot of attraction is mental, whether we realize it or not. We’re more likely to be attracted to people our same age because it’s more likely that they will care about and be interested in the things we care about and are interested in as well as have had the same experiences to shape our world viewpoint. When I (in my 40s) am speaking with a teenager or somebody in their 20s, in many ways I am able to empathize and understand their point of view as I was once a teenager myself, but in other ways I might as well be trying to communicate with a different species. As far as the purely physical goes, in general (IN GENERAL) people tend to be attracted to what they’re more familiar with. As we age, the people around us and including ourselves look their age and that’s what we become familiar with. Just a theory.
Once you’re out of puberty, I think biologically speaking an attractive adult is an attractive adult, and youth (younger than, say, 30) does give an advantage. Socially, though, most of us recognize implicit or explicit differences in lived experience, maturity, personality, etc. that tend to draw us toward people closer to our own age.
You must be a teenager to ask this.
When you are older and have more life experiences, you stip havibg the time you used to; and you also become more mature.
Teenagers are immature to 20 year olds.
20 year olds don’t have the same life goals as 30 years olds.
And this continues on and on.
Old sickos who like young people are into it because they are abusive controlling manipulators. They’re sadistic.
The Psychology of Attractions states as such: Aesthetics is #2. Familiarity is #1. You’re going to be attracted to things that are familiar to you first and foremost. Age is not necessarily visible on the surface, but maturity, financial stability, shared trauma from work experiences, jaded sense of humor etc. all those count as familiar traits that you might gravitate towards.
You would still be able to acknowledge that someone much younger or older than you is attractive, but it’s quite vividly clear how different the compulsion is.
I think there’s probably a lot of biological triggers for that sort of thing, but I don’t think there’s a lot of research into the question.
what is the trigger here???
I suspect the answer is that we find things we see a lot of attractive. We tend to hang about with people who are similar ages to us so we tend to find them more attractive. This isn’t true for everyone of course – I was recently talking to a 76 year old guy whose 26 year old girlfriend had just given birth. As we age, many of us will have children and we start to see childish traits in younger people making them less attractive.
Physical Attraction? From a Male perspective, doesn’t matter what age group. 18-23, 24-29, 30-35, etc, i find what’s beautiful to be attractive. For dating, and find a mate to marry, is more complicated than who you want to fuck.
Speak for yourself, i still like the 14 years old
It usually gets older as you do.
When I was 13 I openly talked about how I think 25 year olds are the hottest. I would actively seek women who were older than me and even hooked up with early 20s women when I was late teens. Now I’m early 30s and I still think 25 year olds are very attractive.
It’s simply societal norms, no biological reason.
i think about this all the time and more broadly than attraction alone. like when I was a kid, I thought teenagers looked grown af. then, as a 21 year old, teenagers look like children. as an adult in my late 20s now, teenagers look prepubescent lmfao.
Think back to when you were in school. How did the people around you look?
Chances are, you remember them as.. well, normal people. they are more-or-less your age. They spoke at pretty much the same level of intelligence as you, enjoyed the same movies, music and games as you.
As you get older, this doesnt change. You see people younger than you and they are kids. You see people older than you and they are adults. The people around you are just… people.
It comes down the the relatability of the people you are around (your ‘peer group’) combined with your point of view.
Memory and experience are weird things
It’s weird and very awesome that I find women my age attractive.
when you’re 14 you’re probably around other 14 year olds everyday. when you’re in your 30s i hope you are not
Isn’t it just a change in your brain? I thought people in their 30s were old when I was 20, then when I hit 30 I started finding guys in their 30s and 40s to be hot and when I looked at 20 year olds again, I thought they were gross babies.
I have no clue. When I was in high school, I liked high school and college guys. When I was in college I liked the late 20 year Olds and early 30’s. Now that I’m in my late 30’s, I have the strange attraction to 50, 60 year old men. It’s so weird because when I was in my teens and twenties Iooked at 40 plus year Olds and never found them hot like I do now.
I’d really like to know the answer. Personal anecdote but when I was 15 I was (involved?) with a 42 year old. In hindsight I understand that rationally it’s grooming and preying and all that, but part of me wonders if maybe there was a part where it was real you know? How do our brains just shut off what ages we find attractive as we age ourselves, so maybe this person really did just catch feelings. That’s not to say that it was right and yes they did abuse their authority however it’s something I often have a hard time reconciling.
I find the amount of people I’m attracted to in my age range drastically decreases with time. At 18 I’d probably have found 80% of women my age to be potentially sexually attractive. Now in my early 40s the number of 40+ year old women that I consider as physically attractive is much less. Maybe 10%.
I’m 41f and fancy the pants off men who are in their mid 20s. Thankfully the ones I meet are into older women, so it’s a win win!
Hmm I remember being attracted to mature women when I was a teen
Laws is the simple answer
This is just on vibes, but I’m like 99% sure it’s social. Animals don’t give a shit how old their mate is, as long as the mate shows characteristics of good fertility/virility.
Notably, pedophilia is not evolutionarily beneficial, nor is being sexually attracted to menopausal women. If she can’t give birth, natural selection won’t support her as a mate. (However, the existence of menopause way before old age hints that older women do clearly serve a social role that help their bloodlines continue. Grandmothers are good for social species.)
But there is no animal reason we don’t decide 15 year olds are hot forever. It’s the fact that they are immature enough that they are socially unacceptable for an older mate.
Go into a new social group (new class, job, whatever) and on the first day count how many people you find attractive. Do the same after a year and you’ll see that the number has increased.
Humans have an easier time finding attractiveness in groups we are familiar with. Take race for example, if you are white you will more likely find more white women attractive than black or asian (statistically, not absolutely). This doesn’t mean you wont find people of other races attractive, but the bar will subconsciously be higher.
This familiarity is part of the reason why a lot of times people will find attractive other people that are similar to the parent of the sex they are attracted to, or sibling, or whatever figure you spent a lot of time with and had positive feelings towards.
It’s the same with age. You tend to spend most of your time with people of similar age to you, therefore, your preferences shift equally.
Minimum age to date = (Your Age/2)+7
In a human sexuality class, it was taught that our attraction ages with us. For the average person at least. And as some have pointed out, even when you find ppl outside of your age range (a 40 yr old into a 20yr old for ex) attractive, attraction and relationship are more than just sexual attraction, so a 40 yr old may be attracted to a 20 yr old, but not be interested knowing they have nothing in common and are in different stages of life.
People who are pedophiles have their attraction stunted basically (something abt the white matter is thought to affect this, cause its like a connective tissue kinda and it can get in the way of growth – at least thats my understanding, theres more info out there). They stay within that range basically forever (like if they were stunted 9yo theyll like ppl around that age, nothing much older or younger). There’s therapy for this but no “cure”.
However, people who are predators (rapists/abusers/etc) are attracted to people their of their age range, but don’t mind stepping out of that bubble bc they are opportunists that look for vulnerable ppl to be taken advantage of – which is why a lot target children, elderly, disabled, or inebriated ppl. Its actually less common of pedophiles to offend, most child victims are targetted by predators, who will have victims of varying ages or kinds. Predators are mostly attracted to hurting and holding power over others, so though they aren’t stunted, they go for whatever.
My professor was a Sex therapist, but this aspect of sexuality was not her specialty (we had a guest lecturer help though), and its been a while, but this was the gist.
It’s through a combination of how certain features and colorings look through a certain age. For example it’s a well known phenomenon that brunettes tend to look better as they age as well as shapely figures like pear or hourglass. Blondes aren’t noted to age well after early 20s (and I am one, I should know 😂😩) and certain figures like straight/brick or apple often don’t look appetizing after pregnancy or weight gain.
The brain basically observes at what point the features or looks they like look prettiest.
Love this question. Would like to add that for me, it was environmental and also trauma related.
Since I turned thirty I realized I can’t even tell what age someone is. Anything between 25 and 50 is a crapshoot.
I think not being in a large group of people has made me entirely lose the ability to know what my own age looks like in other people.
So I don’t even know what age most people I find attractive are.